1. The People’s Republic of
Mongolia
Current population of 2.8 million people
92.9% Khalk Mongolian
5% Kazakh
4.8 million ethnic Mongolians estimated in the
People’s Republic of China province
of Inner Mongolia
Size of the country:
Just a little over 600,000 square miles
One fifth the size of the contiguous United States
Slightly smaller than Alaska
Border of about 3,000 miles with China
Border of about 2,200 miles with Russia
(mostly with Siberia and Tuva)
Arable Land: 0.77%
Most of the population’s economy is based on
herding and skin trading (sheep, camel)
Mining deposits of copper, coal and molybdenum.
Uranium is rumored in the northwest
2. Mongolia
21 districts or aimags
Five national parks
One railroad line
Zero paved roads east-west
One semi-paved road north-south
Lower one-third of the country is the
Gobi Desert
98% literacy rate
Mongolian language, Cyrillic alphabet
Minority languages : Kazakh, Russian
(about half of all Mongolians
are fluent in Russian)
Religion:
50% are Buddhist
40% are none
5% are Shamanist or Christian
5% are Muslim
3. Mongolian History
Chinggis Khan and later Kubla Khan
controlled the world’s largest land
empire ever in the 13th Century.
The country came under control of
China from the 16th Century until 1921.
Officially Mongolia became a republic in
1924, and that same year declared itself
communist. Mongolia was the second
declared communist country in the
world, after Soviet Russia.
The great liberator of Mongolia was
named Sukhbaatar.
His statue pictured here in Sukhbaatar
Square in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar.
4. МОНГОЛ УЛСЫН
The traditional Mongolian script was centuries old, but was banned during the Soviet era in
favor of Cyrillic and now is used only in very formal or traditional settings.
5. Mongolian History
During the 1930’s, the country became
Stalinist and repressive under
Choibalsan, among other things
destroying all but two of its Buddhist
monasteries and killing an estimated
17,000 monks.
Up until 1990, almost one-third of GDP
was direct aid from the Soviet Union.
This aid disappeared virtually overnight,
and the country now has poverty in
ways that it never experienced during
the years between 1924 and 1990.
6. Erdene-Zuu monastery, Xharhorin, site of Karakorum. The monastery was built in
1586 using the materials of the old city of Karakourm, Chinggis Khan’s capital.
7. Erdene-Zuu was one of two monasteries to survive the Soviet purges of the 1930’s.
8. Gandan Hiid was the other surviving monastery, in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar.
The building on the left houses a 60-foot gold-plated statue of Buddha, built in 1995.
9. Russians call them “yurts,” Mongolians call them “gers.” About half of all Mongolians,
including those living in urban areas, live in gers. Stove fuel is usually dried sheep dung
and not coal or wood, since forests are few and far between and coal costs money.
10. The four basic food groups of Mongolia
are mutton, mutton, mutton and mutton.
Buuz – mutton dumplings
Hoshuur – mutton pies
Tsoivan – noodles with mutton
The part most loved by Mongolians is the
fat of the hindquarters.
Food is fuel in Mongolia, and the most
common chef’s technique is to boil the
mutton, throw some salt on it and dinner is
served.
Next time you see a Mongolian restaurant,
be aware that you’re having Chinese food
by another name.
11. Naadam – the national holiday of Mongolia in July (sort of like July 4th in the U.S.)
One of the three “manly” sports of Naadam is Mongolian wrestling.
12. Men and women both compete
in the second “manly” sport of
Naadam, which is archery, but
they compete separately.
13. By far the most important of the three “manly” sports is horse racing.
14. All horse racing competitors in the “manly” sport of horse racing are under twelve
years old, and both boys and girls can compete.
15. My first Peace Corps site was in the city of Sukhbaatar, in the aimag (district, state) of
Selenge, two miles from the border with Russia and the last train stop in Mongolia before
entering Siberia.
16. Ovos are atop any sizable hill in Mongolia. The tradition is to walk around them three times
clockwise and make an offering (money, vodka bottle, cow head, whatever is handy).
17. Almost all agriculture in Mongolia
takes place in the Selenge River
Valley, near where the Selenge and
Orkhon Rivers meet. These two
rivers flow north into Lake Baikal in
Siberia, the world’s largest
freshwater lake.
18. My second site as a Peace Corps
Volunteer was in a city called Muren,
located in the aimag of Huvsgul
20. Muren is heavily forested, so most stoves use
wood instead of coal and dung, which is more
common in the rest of Mongolia. There is also
commercial logging in this area, mostly by U.S.-
based companies.
21. I lived in a ger next door to this retired couple picture above.
My first Peace Corps assignment was teacher training,
which meant language teaching to adult teachers as well as
courses in teaching methodology.
My counterpart and best friend was Naraa, the woman in
yellow. This is a Tsgaan Sar (Asian new year) party that we
had with an 8th grade class that Naraa and I co-taught.
22. By horse into eastern Huvsgul for a cave mapping expedition…
40. End of the day
Cheese in the summer is
usually from mare’s milk,
called arrul in Mongolian
Cooking with sheep dung
Roger Cohen giving a connoisseur’s
approval to some arrul
49. Mongolia is 94% ethnic
Mongolian in population
However, Bayan-Olgii aimag is
almost 90% Kazakh
(about 5% of the country’s
overall population)
The first language of most
people here is Kazakh, although
there are also Uighars and
Tuvans in the region
Almost all of the Kazakh-
Mongolians are Muslim
50. If you’d like to read more on this
region, I was the one that got my
friend Louisa the teaching job in
the farthest western village of the
entire country, a place called
Tsengel, which led to the writing
of this book. I make a couple of
cameo appearances.
Her book won the inaugural
Royal Society of Literature
Ondaatje Prize in 2004.
51. My new Peace Corps job was in the Altai Tavanbogd National Park
52. Me in my Mongolian
riding jacket, with my
Mongolian horse
The pack mule of
western Mongolia
60. The Potani Glacier and three of the Tavanbogd Mountains (Five Saints). The mountain
in the middle is Huiten Uul (Cold Mountain), the highest in Mongolia at 14,875 feet.
61. The summit of Huiten Uul is shared between
Russia, China & Mongolia
62. Heading up the Potani Glacier
The route was twelve miles up
the glacier and then a climb of
an ice wall to the summit ridge
63. The four foreigners on the summit ridge
Rogier, Cedric, Matty & Greg
Burying the skanky Skeeter hat
with a Mongolian sacred scarf
66. My last two weeks in Mongolia I went out on two trips:
The Gobi Desert and Gurvansaikhan National Park
Then for a last two days of camping, in Terelj National Park
69. The Gobi Desert
Over 500,000 square miles in area
About ½ in the Republic of Mongolia
and ½ in the Inner Mongolia province
of China
Temperature extremes in one day
can go from -30°F to over 100°F
